The Politics of Resentment and Fascism

Sep 13, 2017 (San Diego) The 2016 elections are over. However, the questions of how Donald Trump got elected should not end. The first thing that needs to be said is that we are seeing an openly fascist movement in the United States. Democrats continue to miss the why this is happening. They are not without precedent. Social Democrats and Conservatives in Germany also missed the why with the rise of Adolph Hitler. The fools even thought they could control him.

While Trump is not Hitler, his politics parallel some of what Hitler did. Democrats better wake up before it is too late. What fueled Trump is 30 years of talk radio and the rise of resentment politics. What fuels Trumpism is a deep sense that everything that could go wrong has. Oh and also privilege and fear of losing their place in society. There is also an aspect to this involving social class and how some people of color have succeeded beyond what once was socially acceptable. In a country with a very real, but hardly admitted to caste system, those people broke unspoken social norms.

Whether you agree with the neoliberal politics of Barack Obama or not, him becoming president fueled these resentment politics. Simply put, a Harvard graduate in the White House who happens to be biracial was a step too far for people who fear the changes that are coming. These are people who have listened to the likes of Rush Limbaugh, and yes, Trump, who created a different reality for them. This is a place where they are under attack. Where quotas for whites exist at universities. This is a country where whites are being replaced, it does not matter if this is black, Latino, or Asian, are displacing them. These people fear that these minorities will treat them the same way they treated those people. Fear and projection are deep in this psyche.

This is a world where an internal enemy is essential. Some of these enemies are Jews, and people of color who do not work as hard as they do. There is no use in explaining that people do. The image of a welfare queen is strong with them.

This alternate reality has given these people an internally consistent, if wrong, explanation to stagnating wages, or the fact that it takes two people and three jobs to maintain a standard of living. Facile explanations are all that is needed. Actual economic data with charts is not something they want to deal with. All they know is Mexicans stole their jobs, Unions are corrupt and Jews control the world. Add to that a dash of the blacks eternally on welfare and smoking crack with eliminationist language, and we are indeed in a very dangerous place.

This is the well known Petri dish where fascism and authoritarianism takes root.

Democrats have a fixation with Bernie bots. First off, before you go scream about these horrible people realize many of them were bots, generated in a classic influence campaign by the Russians. Moreover, Democrats are making a similar mistake as Social Democrats made in the 1930s.

Party elites chose to ignore the politics of resentment and now continue a campaign, that is sheer insanity, against the reds in their midst. Yes, some of the language used against both Senator Bernie Sanders and his supporters is reminiscent of the 1950s. If we did not have a precedent, we could forgive them. However, these are educated people who went to University and we hope studied the rise of the Third Reich. So they have no excuses.

For the record, none is telling Secretary Hillary Clinton to shut up. But the damage she, and her followers, are doing with this anti-Sanders campaign, in the face of actual fascism is crazy. It speaks to their own sense of entitlement at this point. It is different from that of those who voted for Trump, but it is entitlement nevertheless.

Which brings me to another critical point. Trump attracted a core of angry, easily manipulated, mostly older white people. Some were very well educated and well to do. Never mind they resent the other. So this is not just poor white unemployed Americans. We will also say that it is the upper middle class white Trump voter that has the deepest fears and resentment. They will stick with him the longest. Not unlike Richard Nixon voters during Watergate.

Sanders attracted younger, well educated, people of color. He attracted the multi racial future of the country. The Democratic Party elite needs those voters. It will have to change how it approaches politics. But the first step is that they need to understand what is happening.

Demanding Sanders controls his voters, is only helping to advance the cause of fascism. History will not be kind to Democrats. They continue to walk down a very similar path as the one German party elites walked down in the 1930s.

It is time for Democrats to offer a real alternative to the politics of resentment. One that will help them secure enough votes to stop Trump. We are assuming for a second that electoral politics will work. In reality, I am not sure how mature this strain of fascism is. It is also time to stop the attacks on Sanders. And it is time for Clinton to stop this as well. I am sure she loves the country. Well, history will be a rash judge if she continues down the path she is walking.

I know some of her followers will call this misogyny. That cudgel has lost any meaning. It is literally like the boy who cried wolf. Not every criticism leveled at her is because she is a woman. Meaning, the very real attacks at her, and there were some, have been overshadowed by a drumbeat of calling every critic a misogynist.